While China is the world’s top consumer and producer of plastic, the country has also ushered in several restrictions on the production, sale and consumption of single-use plastics in a bid to stem a national pollution crisis. This has made it more aligned with high-ambition countries than some other major plastic producers.
Observers also see the country looking to expand its global influence via the U.N. — especially in the wake of the U.S. retreat from multilateralism. “We should firmly safeguard the status and authority of the U.N., and ensure its irreplaceable, key role in global governance,” President Xi Jinping said in a speech at a meeting of Asian leaders near Beijing on Sept. 1, attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“My sense is that, of course, they’re also seeing that space opening, generally around environment,” said David Azoulay of the Center for International Environmental Law. “And the U.S. retreating creates a vacuum that China will probably want to fill in their own way.”
That could work out well for high-ambition countries. China is an “important partner for the EU” in the talks, European Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall told POLITICO during the Geneva negotiations.
“Our strategy since Busan has always been to break China away from Saudi [Arabia] and the U.S.,” said one negotiator from a country within the High Ambition Coalition, granted anonymity to discuss closed-door talks.
With China on board, they added, the assumption is that other major players including Russia and India, as well as Southeast Asian countries, will “become more comfortable” with a comprehensive plastic treaty.